words by Jeff Schmuck

photos by Felix Rioux, cko & Jeff Schmuck

Slopestyle qualifiers have just wrapped up in Aspen on the last day of X-Games. The elite field of 20 got two runs each to strut their stuff on the highly-discussed course in front of a growing crowd that is eagerly anticipating the finals.

Andreas Hatveit

Colby West

At the top of their game today was Andreas Hatveit, Jon Olsson, Colby West and Charles Gagnier, who hold the top four spots respectively. Andreas spun all four ways and landed himself in 1st place while Jon was getting his hustle on by straight-airing their entire course all through practice only to bust out a switch misty 9 and kangaroo flip off the bottom two hits during his run.

Charles Gagnier

After being granted a spot in the event Chris Turpin re-emerged on the scene and had been skiing extremely well all week but unfortunately couldn’t hold it together after breaking his ski this morning in practice.

Welcome back Turpin!

Jacob Wester had trouble all morning and fell on both of his runs while Laurent Favre struggled as well, but not before pulling off some sick 540 nose-kangs.

Laurent Favre

Also failing to make finals was PK Hunder, who after a huge cork 12 nose off the bottom hit crashed hard and tweaked his knee. Fortunately, he seems to be alright.

PK Hunder

Simon Dumont was also out of the running today after injuring his shoulder at last night’s King of Quarters quarterpipe event presented by Oakley in downtown Aspen. The Dumont was attempting to break Terje Haaksonsen’s world record of 36 feet out but hit the deck on a 32 foot cork 5, smashing his shoulder up pretty good in the process. He’s expected to be out 2-4 weeks, leaving the door open for others to dominate the upcoming US Open and Jeep King of the Mountain superpipe events, as Tanner will not be competing in either. Many are already looking to the Canadian World Cup trio of Mike Riddle, Matt Hayward and Justin Dorey to take charge.

Sammy Carlson

The biggest story of the qualifiers though was Sammy Carlson being disgustingly ripped off by the judges. Sammy crashed on his first run but held it together on the second, doing a misty 5 off the up-box and the biggest air of the day off the bottom hit with a switch 9. The guy who wanted it more than anyone sat back a bit on his landing and the crowd tensed up as they awaited the results. Peter Olenick and his family paced nervously as well, as Pete was on the bubble in 10th place and Sammy was the only person that could knock him off. Sammy’s score of 51.33 then appeared, landing him in a ridiculously miscalculated and undeserved 18th place out of 20. I suppose X-Games wouldn’t be X-Games without someone getting screwed over controversially judging.

Sammy Carlson

Finals are kicking off at 2:30pm Mountain time. Tune in to ESPN to watch it go down live and be sure to stick around the site as we’ll be giving you a full rundown of what went down shortly after the event.

Final Results

1 Andreas Hatveit - 91.33

2 Jon Olsson - 89.33

3 Colby West - 87.33

4 Charles Gagnier - 85.33

5 Thomas Dolplads - 83.33

6 JF Houle - 77.66

7 Tanner Rainville - 74.66

8 Jossi Wells - 74.66

9 Anders Backe - 72.00

10 Peter Olenick - 66.33

11 Sean Decker - 64.00

12 Tim Durtschi - 62.00

13 Laurent Favre - 60.00

14 Jacob Wester - 57.00

15 John Spriggs - 55.00

16 Matt Walker - 53.33

17 Tim Russell - 51.66

18 Sammy Carlson - 51.33

19 PK Hunder - 36.66

20 Chris Turpin - 24.33